Chicago protesters stage ‘die-in’ over police shootings after blocking traffic

The crowd of protesters outside City Hall chanted “16 shots and a cover-up” and also called for the resignation of Cook County State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez, who has been criticised for taking more than a year to charge the officer responsible for the shooting. When a Cook County judge acquitted Detective Dante Servin for the fatal shooting of Rekia Boyd in 2012, he said Alvarez should have charged him with murder, not manslaughter.

Hundreds of protesters marched through the streets of Chicago and staged “die-ins” on Thursday, calling for the resignation of embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel a day after he emotionally apologized for the 2014 police shooting of a 17-year-old black teen.

One by one, protesters took to the mic with their gripes surrounding the controversial cases of Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald and Ronald Johnson. She called Hernandez’s use of deadly force “reasonable and permissible”, citing that Johnson was running toward a police vehicle and a public park on the South Side.

“I work for you…my first responsibility and our government’s responsibility is to keep you and your family safe and to make sure you feel safe in your neighborhood”.

“I welcome the engagement of the Justice Department”, Emanuel told reporters Thursday.

Alvarez, in the midst of a tough re-election fight, dis-missed claims by Oppenheimer that a gun had been planted by Chicago police at the scene, saying it was unsupported by the evidence. The only people who believe it will be his “lap-dog city council”, another said, according to the Tribune. A review by the city’s quasi-independent police watchdog agency showed that of 409 shootings involving police since 2007, the agency found only two with credible allegations against an officer. “We’re in different times now when we’re talking about transparency and what the public wants to see, and that’s what we’re doing”.

“There has to be a symbol of change and there has to be a reality of change”.

“By following a time-honored practice, you could clearly say we were adding to the suspicion and distrust”, he said. “We can not trust them”.

“With release of this video it’s really important for public safety that the citizens of Chicago know that this officer is being held responsible for his actions”, she told Reuters in November.

Now, as the stories above indicate, as mayor, Emanuel has had his come-to-Jesus moment on his renegade police force far too late to extricate himself from complicity in the crimes of that institution.

Thanks in part to a series of missteps by the mayor after the shooting, exacerbated by a longer-term failure to address more systemic problems with Chicago’s police department, Emanuel appears to have lost much of the city’s trust. “I do think that if this continues, certainly he would never get re-elected again with 55 percent of the black vote” as he did eight months ago.

“It was sad that people in Chicago didn’t even understand what was happening in Chicago until then”.